Catch Me I'm Falling
by broadwaypants
Summary: He'd never known that his musings about life and love could be put down on paper, had even laughed in his therapist's face when she had suggested it. It was a private thing, he reasoned, so why should he write it down?


It was silly, really.

All he was doing was burying his guilt, left over from an incident that everyone else seemed to have forgotten.

But he still did it.

He'd never known that his musings about life and love could be put down on paper, had even laughed in his therapist's face when she had suggested it. It was a private thing, he reasoned, so why should he write it down? He was the only person who needed to know what he was thinking, but somehow when the pen touched the paper, the tap started going and wouldn't stop.

When he had found his mother pouring over his journals, he had freaked. After a lot of screaming and hysterics and childish whining, he had calmed down enough to ask her what the _hell_ she thought she was doing.

But that was all ancient history now.

His mother had arranged all his thoughts into a collection of stories, sent it into a publisher, and the next thing he knows, he's the youngest openly gay man with a memoir. And a bestselling memoir at that.

It was strange at first, walking down the street and being recognized. Even stranger was all the other young men who came up to him and told him how much his writing meant to them, how much it had helped them.

But then came the condolences.

Jason's name had had to be changed, of course, because his parents had threatened to sue when they caught wind of the soon-to-be published book. That didn't mean the story had changed. It was still their story, but now the world knew them as Peter and John, not Peter and Jason.

Sometimes, when he was in one of his more cynical moods, he laughed about how in the book both of them shared names with two of the Apostles.

It had been strange, hearing people tell him how sorry they were about John or how John sounded like a lovely boy or even the occasional insensitive, "Now that John's gone, wanna fuck?" He learned not to do a double take at the name, just as he learned to keep writing even when his heart wasn't in it anymore.

Nobody pressured him to write, but he could see it in their eyes. Everyone wanted to know what he would be coming out with next. They didn't seem to understand that his life was only one story, and that story had ended when John – no, _Jason_, he had to remind himself – had died.

But still he kept at it, writing about this John character as if he was some invisible friend that only he could see. As if John lived through him, as if he was a vessel carrying the story.

His mother put the second book together, joining his jumbled thoughts and rambles together for him. She seemed to enjoy it, now that everything was out in the open. He never intervened; it was therapy for both of them. She could finally understand his thoughts and feelings while he could share without really sharing anything at all.

His therapist told him he needed to stop writing about John. It wasn't natural, writing about this character that was spawned from Jason's parents' denial. He agreed with her, but the words kept coming.

It was so very silly, but he found that once he started, he couldn't stop.

It was fitting, then, that when he moved out he chose a house with a picket fence. His fairy tale hadn't stopped with the stories; it was consuming him.

The dog followed soon after.

He painted the fence white and in his next book, John married a lovely young woman named Mary.

His therapist told him he needed to stop writing about John. He told her to piss off, and started seeing a new therapist.

People still stopped him on the street, but he hardly got well-wishes and condolences anymore. Instead came the criticism. "Why had John married?" they all asked. He told them he was writing a true story, not a fairy tale.

In the next book John cheated on Mary with a man. He never named the man, but he was amazed at how many people thought it had been a self-insert. That thought had never even crossed his mind. John wasn't real, was he?

His therapist told him he needed to stop writing about John, put him on medication, and advised him to move back in with his mother. He stuck with the therapist long enough to get his meds from the pharmacy, then told him to piss off.

His mother told him he needed to slow down. She told him he needed to find someone special again, that he needed to find the person that made him feel loved. Instead he found drunken one night stands and sexually transmitted diseases.

John died in his next book.

Nobody stopped him on the street anymore.

His mother had him checked into a hospital. He was hooked up to machines that looked at his brain, that tried to keep his breathing under control. They released him after only three days. There was nothing wrong with him.

He couldn't remember who John was.

Someone named Nadia came to visit him, asking him about Jason. He had never known a Jason. He suspected his mother had put her up to it.

His therapist told him he needed to start writing about Peter.

He didn't know who Peter was.

He named the razor blades Peter and Jason, after the two people he couldn't remember. Peter and Jason carved beautiful pictures together, even if it did hurt.


End file.
